By Amazon on
The Drupal Association is working to set up a membership program. The goal is to design a open, fair, and effective way for individuals and companies to financially support the Drupal community directly and get benefits from the Drupal project in return. We are in the research phase now and could use your help. Please take five minutes to fill out the preceeding survey.
Drupal Association
With the financial support of the community and sponsoring organizations, the Drupal Association is building the infrastructure needed for the Drupal community to flourish. The Association helps the Drupal community with funding, infrastructure, events, promotion, and distribution.
more: Drupal Association
Comments
None of the above?
I think we should separate association membership from sponsorship. Membership should be based on community involvement and contributions, not a cash payment. This involvement could includes patches, modules, support, documentation, and promotion. If an individual or an organization would like to be listed as a sponsor, that should be handled separately. If an organization or individual qualifies for both membership and sponsorship, they they should be listed as both.
Because members vote in the Association's decisions, it seems bad to put these memberships (and their votes) up for purchase. In terms of pricing, we could set up tiers for sponsors. For some organizations, $100 is a lot of money. For others, $5000 is nothing.
my opinion regarding bought
my opinion regarding bought involvement is, keep it maintained and a strict(passage into membership), without any much of wings to let people produce fake identities easily and boast around about their involvement in Drupal which is "bought". calculating contribution is a good way for individual's membership. or allow levels of membership..
I agree
The value of this community is from those who contribute so much toward modules, features, bug fixes, etc. Those aren't (necessarily) the ones with lotsa $$$.
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List of Thomas Trains - Thomas the Train
Professional memberships
Memberships in the Drupal Assocation -- so called "individual" or "corporate" memberships -- do not vote in the Association's decisions. Only the Board votes on decisions.
Please read the statutes and internal regulations of the Drupal Association for full details.
Memberships are being designed as a way to show support for the project, as well as get some benefits in return. This is more like a professional organization, and we would hope that anyone that works professionally with Drupal becomes a member.
Membership is ok. Challenge: avoid unfair gap between rich/poor.
Personally I am fine with the priciples of paid/professional memberships, and it is important that those possibilities are looked into.
However, I think that there is one concern that I would like to see a cross-culture "representative" poll illustrate: The importance of giving credit for a variety of contributions, not only for those who can buy it. I would like to propose that we first collaboratively make a list of which contributions are worthy of such a "badge", and for all that do not involve direct money investments, we could find ways to honour them and give them the same membership status according to a set of rules.
In particular, I am thinking about ways that module contributors through their quality of code and how they follow up on bugs etc. to earn a rating that would lead to a certain level of membership and badge. Further, for documenters, for forum activities, for bug reporters, testers, theme designers (user votes on themes and a way to survey which themes are mostly used can give a rating, etc.)
I really hope that the Drupal Association takes in the fact that Drupal is completely global, which means that a western membership fee would be unfair to pay for someone in Cambodia who actually by paying 10 times less, in fact is contributing just the same effort based on his or her situation.
To take another approach on this:
If we can use Drupal and Drupal.org to collaboratively work out a well working and fair scheme for global memberships, then we have actually also made a significant contribution to the world at large.
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( Evaluating the long-term route for Drupal 7.x via BackdropCMS at https://www.CMX.zone )
General contribution vs. membership
To your comments, we don't (currently) have any indicator of general contribution. About the only thing is the "member since" indicator, and even then you can have someone with an old account that hasn't done much. I think highlighting contributing participants here on d.o. would be something separate than membership in the Association. So, for example, you would click through from the membership entry to the d.o. user profile.
Yes, this is understood, and it's going to be hard to wrestle with. We'll need to encode some different approaches to this, perhaps contribution of time in lieu is something that can be done. XX worth of money, or YY worth of hours.
Raising revenue from multiple sources doesn't exclude anyone
Right now the Drupal association is pursuing at least half a dozen revenue generating opportunities.
Ads, Membership fees, Book sale affiliate programs, conference fees, workshops, direct donations, etc.
One of my concerns is that if we raised money in only one way it might exclude contributions that don't work for a particular geography, income level, business model, etc. On the other hand, getting the volunteer hours dedicated to manage 6 or more revenue streams is very difficult.
Right now, we are in a discovery phase trying to learn what the community says it wants, what the volunteers of the Drupal association can manage, what the community actually commits revenue towards.
So it's important to consider how contributions to support the Drupal project can be done outside of just memberships. There are also volunteer contributions to the Drupal project, not including core, themes, or contributed modules that need to be taken into consideration.
So if pricing for the Drupal association doesn't seem globally fair, please consider that we assumed non-membership fee contributions would also be made.
Kieran Lal
Fairness should be pursued anyway
Ref.
I am not entirely sure I grasp the meaning of that sentence, perhaps it means what I am referring to as flexible solution. If so, as long as the flexibility and options are clear, and in fact fair, then there will not be a question of unfairness... That is basically my point: provide a solution that is obviously fair.
But just to make sure:
I hope it is within the scope, interest and power of the Drupal Association to actually make sure that any such "if" 's are eliminated. That what is pursued is a solution that actually provides acknowledgement options in a fair way also to those who invest valuable time etc. in Drupal, not necessarily money.
I think that there must be more schemes in the membershp model than just what can be tied to money. After all, this community is largely built on time contributions. I think we have time enough to find a model that honours several kinds.
Even a potential advertisement solution does not neither need to be limited to monetary contributions. We can - and should - seek to find well working flexible solutions, I think.
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( Evaluating the long-term route for Drupal 7.x via BackdropCMS at https://www.CMX.zone )
My idea of what membership is about
From the survey itself:
I understand the need, especially within an open source community, to recognize contributions based more on contributions involving mor than just money contributions. I think that already happens...for example module developers and core contributers are easily given credit here at Drupal.org. However, there are a number of us Drupal users with limited coding ability or limited time that don't contribute to Drupal in any of the traditional open source ways. If I can't code well or have the free time to contribute in documentation how best can I support Drupal? I can at least throw a few dollars via membership to support Drupal and its association to help pay for the non-free things in life that eventually does gets billed to the open source project and community as a whole.
For me, I see a paid membership in the Drupal association as a means to be able to support and contribute to Drupal and not so much to receive any special benefit (except the recognition that I've contributed in some way to Drupal). In other words, I'm not so much worried about getting any benefits through membership...I already benefit by using the software! In the end, I don't think it's really as important to what or how you contribute to an open source project...just as long as you do contribute.
-Bryan
CMSReport
"Show us that you're global by showing us the money" ;)
>> For some organizations, $100 is a lot of money. For others, $5000 is nothing.
I totally agree with this. In fact, the whole process might work the best if there were clear guidelines with very affordable suggested prices that reflected various sizes of organizations but if the "sizing" decision was left totally open for the sponsoring organizations.
For example, let's leave it to a global corporation to state just how global it is by the size of the contribution that it's making. By making a $100 contribution, such a corporation would not be making much of a statement for itself that it is global in size and lowballing its contribution would actually end up having a negative effect of self-promotion of being a cheap nickler and dimer.
One could always start out by clearly stating that such an open scheme is being tried first and that more specific pricing might always end up being a down the road option, depending on the original outcome.
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Svi smo mi zarobljenici svojih ličnih iskustva.
We are all prisoners of our own experiences.
I agree too
For a freelancer who only does Drupal work once every few months, 100 euro might be much. For a company with 3 employees, 5000 euros might be much. It all depends on the scale.
Corporate influence...
To be honest, I don't fully understand the structure of Drupal membership right now. Concequently, the issues here may be non-issues with the current structure, but I think they're important to watch out for.
My only concern with the material presented here is the "benefits" that companies receive for their contributions. The nature of these benefits should not yeild influence in Drupal's development (any more than any other member of the community). I think that financial contributions to Drupal should be made in the spirit that the contributer likes what the community is doing with the drupal project. Those contributors should not be granted any power to decide the direction of drupal development as anything more than another individual member of the community as a result of their financial contribution. Of course, if a company no longer likes the direction the drupal project is going, ceasing their financial support, and/or use a different product should be their right. Using their financial contribution as leverage to affect the path of development should not.
-- White Raven
Drupal Association does not influence Drupal Open Source
Hi, there is an important distinction. The Drupal Association supports the Drupal Open Source project, but it has no influence over the direction of the open source project.
The Drupal Association does not get involved in core, contributions, or themes development. It does get involved in Drupal.org, development tools for the Drupal project, infrastructure, conferences, marketing of the Drupal project, etc.
So paid members of the Drupal association would have no say over Drupal open source development other than indirectly supporting the infrastructure that makes it possible.
These distinctions are clearly spelled out in the creation of the Drupal association. I hope that addresses your concerns.
Cheers,
Kieran
Kieran Lal
General Information about the Drupal Association
That's an important point and I wasn't clear about it before reading your comment.
It occured to me that someone who just happended to come upon this discussion would probably have no idea of what is going on.
So, for the noobies who may not be able to or have the time to navigate themselves to the right page, here's a copy of the most concise statement of the Assocations goals that I could find. Following that is a copy of "Why do we need a Drupal Association?" from the Association's FAQ page.
I think the Drupal Association, not the Drupal Open Source project, will be adjusting its role and finding its feet in the next months, as these organizational things do.
- Bill
http://association.drupal.org/node/71
http://association.drupal.org/about/faq
The challenge: Gathering "all" relevant information.
About the survey: Add a colum?
There is currently no way of stating that one simply disagree or think a particular suggestion is bad. As it is now, one can only state willingness to pay, indifference, or unwillingness. No way to state that the reason for "unwillingness" has nothing to do with money, but with for example negative consequences of the option in question. Maybe add a column named "Bad idea"?
Important not to move too fast on this issue
I somewhat agree with the first comment:
http://drupal.org/node/147275#comment-236061
at least in setting focus on debating those issues thoroughly.
This topic also has some relevance as to the options of "working your way".
Are there any plans for introducing user votes/node votes and userpoint schemes so that contributors can earn their level of membership by actual non-cash contributions? I think that is of uttermost importance, as it is why this community has gotten this far - through non-cash contributions. It can be "risky business" to move too quickly into decisions on this matter. We probably would benefit from a "lenghty debate" about the most fundamental concerns that are raised here.
First discuss the concerns, and possibly list and weigh them? A poll about their importance?
I think that perhaps there should be a series of surveys, polls and discussions about the concerns first, not jumping too quickly on the questions of how much money etc. It is also important that this process shows that difficult or uncomfortable questions and dilemmas are taken seriously and patiently debated in the open, for all to review. If any of this goes on only on a mailing list, then the progress should be reported here on the site underway, not after decisions have been made.
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( Evaluating the long-term route for Drupal 7.x via BackdropCMS at https://www.CMX.zone )
Re: extra column
The listed set of benefits are examples of things the Association is exploring. Please add additional feedback at the end of the form on individual items.
No decisions are being made yet, and this is exactly why the survey is being posted first, along with lots of opportunity for discussion.
Proofread the survey
I just took the survey very quickly and I noticed two grammar errors. I am not sure if the surveyors or a Drupal Association staffer created that, but I would send it past another person in the future.
On the columns portion, the last column is "I'm won't...", and the last page says, "a best".
Not much else to contribute to this discussion. I hope you get useful results! ^_^
Please help with the second error
Hi, I fixed the first error. Could you help me find the second error?
I removed the word "best". Was that the problem?
Cheers,
Kieran
Kieran Lal
Survey doesnt work.
I'm not sure if I am the only one experiencing this, but when I try to complete the survey in firefox, none of the widgets show up. Thus, it is impossible to fill out. And, it is terribly slow. Why couldnt the survey be made with a drupal site (like on drupal.org, for example)? Or am I being a little too pretentious? As I see it, if the Association can't use Drupal itself, I personally don't see any reason to 'donate' for a membership, no matter what the price.
Using the best tool for the job
Survey Monkey is a much better tool with better analysis. That's why I use it instead of the survey modules.
We have had almost 500 responses and since this is a heavy Firefox using community I would would have heard that it doesn't work in firefox. With that said, SurveyMonkey did do a major upgrade this weekend, and it's possible your particular browser and extensions conflict or have identified a bug.
Cheers,
Kieran
Kieran Lal
I've bitched about this before
But, unfortunately, my bitching hasn't turned into someone magically cloning Survey Monkey in Drupal. And I also didn't get a pony for Christmas :P
phpSurveyor
Btw, I recommend trying out phpSurveyor for future surveys - it's much more powerful than Survey Monkey imo.
Am I missing something?
Beginning at question:
8. At what price would you say the Drupal (individual/corporate) annual membership is INEXPENSIVE (a bargain)?
I could not find any information describing the "benefit" of membership (except to the association itself).
"...and get benefits from the Drupal project in return" is not very specific. I could not proceed with the survey because I refuse to enter an answer to an undefined question. And, these answers are all required!?
It will be interesting to see how much the Drupal community is willing to pay for a basket of imagined benefits. Any answer greater than zero and I am going to start my own association with "benefits" too.
I am trying to take your survey seriously. I plan to donate to Drupal. And, I will complete the survey as soon as the benefits are explained.
Example benefits are on next page
There is a large list of example benefits on the next page after that question. We have not nailed down any set of benefits, but are putting out this survey to help gather information of what people would actually regard as a benefit. And, there are Previous and Next buttons where you can go back and change your answers quite easily.
Hope that helps.
membership support Drupal project
The Drupal Association membership supports the following, as specified in the survey:
"The Association helps the Drupal community with funding, infrastructure, events, promotion, and distribution."
We would hope that you would first consider the main benefit is helping the Drupal association support the Drupal project. The reason we didn't specify benefits in advance is that we would have had wildly skewed answers depending on which of the twenty benefits you wanted.
We don't have the volunteer resources to guarantee or completely research twenty or more benefits. But the results of the survey are making it very clear which benefits a selection of the community thinks are most valuable. So we will focus our efforts on the providing the most valued benefits.
So your point about inadequately defined benefits is valid, but we had to start somewhere.
Kieran Lal
What about government?
The survey seems to assume I am representing either myself or a business. I am using Drupal in a government environment. The questions don't quite seem to fit, or I have to re-interprate the questions for my organization, and I am concerned about skewing the meaning of my answers.
Similar to corporate
I think a lot of the items do apply to government, much like corporate memberships. Just answer as you think fits, and leave extra comments at the end. Thanks!
Survey monkey is down
:(
Try again, it's working for me
Try again please.
Kieran Lal
Question regarding membership levels
I noticed on the Drupal Association site that permanent members form the basis for the General Assembly which has the voting rights. I do not see that admitted members have this right or even many others except the ability to pay to join on different levels (bronze, gold, etc...). Why two distinct classes of members for the organization? I have noticed threads and comments that mention the ability to vote in the Association for paid members. How would this work? If the paid members were allowed to vote, would they be included in the General Assembly or would they make up a different class of Association voters?
Obviously if people are going to be asked to pay for membership, I think these are important questions to answer. Especially, since admitted members must continually pay while permanent members get free membership until they decide to formally withdraw from the Association. Can you please describe the nature and differences between admitted members and permanent members.
Take care,
Adrian
Take care,
Adrian
Please read the statutes
The official statutes cover all of these items.
No. That has come up, and been answered. These individual and corporate memberships (and only corporate have different levels) do not convey any voting rights. Admitted members are part of the association, but have different, non voting benefits.
The statutes cover how one can become a permanent member: think of these folks as officers (we call them Community Ambassadors). And then a board is elected from within the permanent members. The individual membership is, as I've said before, kind of like joining a professional organization: you become a member to show you're a member and agree with and support the goals of the organization.
I have read through the
I have read through the official statutes. Why are voting rights not considered for admitted members? Obviously there are many who care about the future of Drupal. I have been in many organizations over the years, and we always received voting rights for membership. Why the exclusivity?
So if I understand you correctly. People can buy membership, but membership doesn't give you the ability to help define the direction of the Drupal Association. Personally I don't think that is a good policy at all. You would get a lot more interest from people if you opened up the organization, much like buying common shares in a public corporation or even a private one. We have a saying in America, "good old boys club", that seems to fit this closed model of voting rights.
Take care,
Adrian
Take care,
Adrian
Good questions
Hi, these are good questions. I certainly don't think that it was developed this way with the intention to introduce exclusivity. There was however, an attempt to ensure a pool of association permanent members who had demonstrated a long term commitment to the project already.
We definitely had an eye to the overthrow of the Mambo project, when the association was formed. We also were constrained by some of the requirements of Belgium Non-profit status, which by law had certain requirements.
Cheers,
Kieran
Kieran Lal
I agree with you Adrian. I
I agree with you Adrian.
I think its important to look at how other organizations incorporate voting rights. Some developers who may not be skilled enough to actually contribute, but they may have needs they want to see fulfilled in the future direction of Drupal. Taking a look at how Transgaming handing member voting for certain projects/games that they wanted to see support for. At the end of the month the highest number of voted projects/games were given priority for the future of Transgaming. Or take a look at how Mandriva does their membership clubs. (Just to mention 2 of MANY)
I also don't think that only developers that contribute should make up the core group of Drupal members that decide the future of Drupal. We need other people helping in the decisions, like PR focused people, business development people, etc. Otherwise we, as a Drupal community, may miss out on many opportunities that are visible to non-hardcore-coders.
To be clear
The Drupal Association will be unlikely to write code / modules directly, unless we have a need for it to support the project in some way. For example, the Association will release the donation module and some other fee-based modules that we need for running conferences, etc. I myself have done many activities to gather support for funding modules: there is no barrier for members in the community to self organize around this.
Also, as stated earlier, the Drupal Association does not determine the technical direction of the Drupal project. We support the community but have no say in what patches go into Drupal core (for example).
Not only developers are part of the Drupal Association. If you look at the staff list, you'll see that (for example) myself, Zack Rosen, and Kieran are not known primarily for development, but for doing "soft" tasks around the community.
Lastly, proposals for ANY activity are welcomed by the association. Take the time to write up your proposal, how it would work, if any money is needed, how this would benefit the community, and why the association should fund or support it. For example, we'll soon be publishing a template on how to put together proposals on hosting a larger Drupal event in your area.
I do not think however that
I do not think however that voting rights should be acquired solely on the basis of capital contribution but there needs to be an easier way for people to obtain voting rights than getting added to the permanent member list and having to refile with the Clerk of Courts.
Take care,
Adrian
Premuim Support / Membership could be the way forward
I firmly believe that offering a premium support option would be the best way to get the _most_ total revenue from the most people.
Reason being it is more accessible to more people ($100 for prem support is a lot more affordable than a $1000 to become a member of the 'association'). Once the initial fee is paid an annual charge of $30 per year for continued support sounds fair.
This is pretty similar to the business models used by paid forum software such as vBulletin, and once the initial revenue is put to good use and Drupal improves even more, the rate can be increased to match those charged by software vendors like vBulletin.
However, paying members must get something in return, access to premium support forums. These can be read by all (including non prem members) so the information contained is still helping the community at large. But the difference being that the Premium Support sections are manned by Drupal Devs and Mods/volunteers who give the threads there more precedence than those on the 'free' forums.
This way nothing is being taken away from everyone else, you are simply offering something new, something you can charge for.
This will also strengthen the Drupal project because more serious individuals and businesses will be attracted to it. I.e. those that don't want to risk a product where there may not be sufficient support and those that can't afford dedicated teams to undertake their Drupal site (such as observer.com popsugar etc etc). I guess many of those who are shying away from Drupal right now.
I would also very seriously consider installing vBulletin for the premium support forums. As much as we like the Drupal forums, they are not really up to the task to serve a 'serious' community, least not as much as we'd like or have come to expect.
One of the biggest things that worries me about Drupal is not having that security, that 'official support' route in case I ever need it - and let's face it, thanks to all its features and functionality, Drupal isn't a walk in the park for most folk, and that help is invaluable to them, and something they would be willing to pay for.
Drupal association should not compete
Hundreds of people make their living providing "support" to their customers to use Drupal. Hundreds of volunteers provide free community driven support through forums, patches to modules, book pages, and IRC support.
To suddenly compete against those two existing engines of support would not be a good idea.
Kieran
Kieran Lal
Really? How much do they
Really? How much do they charge?
Are they as accessible as $100 one off fee and $30 annual fee? My whole point was that these rates are more accessible to _more_ people. So a greater revenue stream.
Just look at other companies using similar models - if you like in the UK you can actually download financial accounts for companies such as Jelsoft (vbulletin). How would half a million pounds in the bank (that's about a million US dollars) sound to the Drupal project...?
Drupal is not a company...
...nor is the Drupal Association. Someone might approach the Drupal Association with a proposal to do this as the "official" provider, and as a business.
I don't think running a business like this directly is something that the Drupal Association is likely to engage in.
It's a suggestion. Based on
It's a suggestion. Based on a proven forumla that is working for other entities. It's irrelevant that they are companies, the fact is it is working and there is no reason why it couldn't work for Drupal or why they shouldn't at least try it.
You don't just have to follow the guides and boundaries set by others, you can innovate you know. Just because Drupal is open source doesn't mean it can't make money... and at the end of the day I think that would be a good thing, as I'm quite certain that money would be reinvested in the project responsibily.
Just make paid forum
Just make paid forum.
for smth about $9.95 - $19.95 per month.
If you are a paid forum member you will guarantee get answer on your technical question about drupal tuning and installing from drupal professionals.
I will be the first member of this forum!
mostly i cant get answers from the free comunity. I get much more help from John K. VanDyk and Matt Westgate Pro Drupal Develpment book (that isn't free)
I'm also ready to pay for the modules that I really need.
If you are driving commercial site on drupal you dont care if the help free or paid. If you can get answers from free community - you are lucky. If no - what is to be done and where to go?
Well....
Well, like someone pointed out above, drupal is a global community and it doesn't make sense to charge European or us prices in 3rd world countries. 20 $ is quite a lot of money in a country like india (where i am from).
I am unsure of what this is all about. If the drupal association has the power to decide the course of the drupal CMS, then membership should definately not be based on money. Also a system should be put up where different economies can be given an equal oppurtunity.
Varun
Make yourself heard at www.kurble.com
Drupal Association does not set technical direction
No, the official charter of the Drupal Association is to support and help grow the community...technical direction as always will happen through current developer channels.
Need to expand the Drupal community.
It's a good thing to create a effective community who can help out other members with their queries and stuff related to drupal. Finance being the main factor should be worked up from the members for the future success of the community.ATB
http://www.eukhost.com | http://blog.eukhost.com
email accounts
I already took the survey so, but I want to add that I think a nice feature of the membership could be email accounts.
I've received several emails to greggles AT drupal.org from people who assumed that the distributed authentication on g.d.o was also an email. Of course it doesn't go anywhere, but it got me thinking that it should!
I'd happily pay some money each year for a forwarding account that sent email to my drupal.org username to a separate account.
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